Don’t Flush Us Uncle Sam

02 Saturday Feb 2013

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Don’t Flush Us Uncle Sam
By Daniel Minteer
 
We’re still in the red
And feeling quite blue
Our money’s still leaving
With our sanity too
 
Come on Uncle Sam
Let’s get out of debt
The bankers won’t thank us
But our children will I bet
 
Then hope’s on the horizon
While growing our stash
Our lives getting grand
Even better with cash
 
But we’re still in the red
Our neighbors blue too
Let America shine
It’s much up to you
 
 

 

This poem was put to a short music video and uploaded to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation website, campaigning against national debt.  They called this video “a rock anthem.”

Do You Create or Consume Wealth?

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Growing Wealth, saving money

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If your existence isn’t producing more monetary value to others than you are receiving, then you’re helping whittle away wealth from the planet.  And if the efforts of those Creating True Wealth don’t surpass the effects of those lapping up wealth like starving dogs, then economic depression isn’t far behind.

Where Does Wealth Come From?

Luckily, a lot of people like to work and are pretty good at their craft, which helps drive the economy.  Simply put, wealth comes from financing work, in other words, spending money to purchase something that someone worked to produce.

If you pay someone to make something tangible for you, the act of them exerting their time and energy upon the raw materials to create the item actually increases wealth on the planet – for them and potentially for you too depending on the quality of their work.  They get paid for their time and increase their wealth.  In return you get something theoretically of equal or greater value.  If the item is of greater value than it cost you, then you have profited from your investment and further increased your wealth as well.  Nice, huh!  Others third parties may benefit too.

George S. Clason describes the principle nicely in his book The Richest Man In Babylon:

cool palace“Wealth grows wherever men exert energy…If a rich man builds him a new palace, is the gold he pays out gone?  No, the brickmaker has part of it and the laborer has part of it, and the artist has part of it.  And everyone who labors upon the house has part of it.  Yet when the palace is completed, is it not worth all it cost?  And is the ground upon which it stands not worth more because it is there?  And is the ground that adjoins it not worth more because it is there?”

Building one house may not make anyone wealthy, though.  In fact, a stream of house building producing a steady income, alone, won’t do it either.

The Discipline of Saving

A portion of your income must be saved for your purse to fatten.  “But when I began to take out from my purse but nine parts of ten I put in, it began to fatten.  So will thine.”  In other words, “pay yourself” by keeping a minimum of 10% of your earnings for saving and investing.

Again, Clason makes a great point:  “Which desirest thou the most?  Is it the gratification of thy desires of each day, a jewel, a bit of finery, better raiment, more food; things quickly gone and forgotten?  Or is it substantial belongings, gold, lands, herds, merchandise, income-bringing investments?  The coins thou takest from thy purse bring the first.  The coins thou leavest within it will bring the latter.”

Discipline is Spelled BUDGET

“The purpose of a budget is to help thy purse to fatten…It is to enable thee to realize thy most cherished desires by defending them from thy casual wishes.”  Don’t you love how that is said!

Evaluate your expenses to determine what is really necessary, considering “That what each of us calls our ‘necessary expenses’ will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.”

How Much of Getting Wealthy is Luck?

Becoming wealthy is not due to luck.  But don’t pass up opportunity.  Act immediately if the price is good.  “Good luck” follows opportunity.  “So must every man master his own spirit of procrastination before he can expect to share in the rich treasures of Babylon.”

Good luck is this:  Hard work, learning, and to “be in the front rank of progress.”fish for dollars

Other Things to Keep in Mind While Growing Wealth

Assess risk before investing in anything.  Consult those experienced in handling money.  Get advice from experts.

“If you desire to help thy friend, do so in a way that will not bring thy friend’s burdens upon thyself.”

Protect your money.  Safe, small returns are better than risky ventures.  Principle must be safe and available.

Don’t force money to impossible earnings.  If it seems too good to be true it probably is.

“Easy money” and “get rich quick” schemes don’t create wealth (they might make an individual richer, but it’s usually due to someone else’s loss).

Your desires must be simple and definite.  Don’t have unrealistic or overly-complicated goals.

As your 10% grows and multiplies, consider buying houses and other property.  Diversify your investments.

Own your dwelling, and buy it out of the 90% left after you pay yourself.

Plan for income in old age.  Your investments should produce income.

In Summary, Create Wealth by Doing the Following:

Work hard.

Save at least 10% with discipline.

Use a budget to make your money behave.

Look for opportunities.

Seek advice from experts, read, get second and third opinions.

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All Quotes from, The Richest Man In Babylon, George S. Clason

What Affects Our Health and Wealth the Most?

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in Health and Food

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The healthiest, longest living peoples in the world eat primarily a fresh whole plant based diet, very little meat/dairy/eggs (a little fish), almost no processed foods, and consume only 1900 calories per day!  Could this be the fountain of youth?

Are We Being Duped?

There is something that affects our health and wealth more than anything else.  And it’s literally right under our noses!  Our food.  But we’re being fooled into thinking it’s everything but food.  Don’t think so?  Then ponder these questions:

Why doesn’t the government emphasize to the public the results of decades of research showing that a rich animal protein (meat/dairy/eggs) and processed junk food diet (i.e., “Western” food, or the “food of the affluent”) is linked with increased levels of all kinds of disease?

On the contrary, why haven’t the results of decades of research, showing that a whole plant based food diet is linked with disease prevention and cure, been emphasized to the public?

Why are medications and procedures to address disease symptoms given priority over dietary prevention and cure treatments, especially when these medications and procedures cost far more and have been shown to be far less effective at treating or curing disease over dietary treatments?

Why is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. (after heart disease and cancer) attributed to “medical care” yet we spend the most on health care and have incredible medical technologies?

Who’s Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes?

The answers to the above questions involve one or more (or all!) of the following:

  • Flawed nutrition research and/or misinformation that causes confusion as to the real cause-effect of diet on health
  • Flawed disease research and/or misinformation that causes confusion as to the real cause-effect of diet on disease
  • “Big money” food companies that push meat, dairy and highly processed “garbage” food products
  • “Big money” drug companies that push pills for every symptom, yet provide no cures
  • “Big money” hospitals that push technology based treatments, yet provide no cures

Mad Yet?

This should make everyone more than a little angry.  Is corporate greed really sacrificing the health and welfare of “the people?”  Many experts think “yes.”

T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, states that “Having been a member of several diet and health policy-making expert panels over a twenty-year period I harbored the view that these panels were dedicated to the promotion of consumer health.  I no longer believe this to be true…I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to health, government is not for the people; it is for the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of the people.”

Some Straight Talk – Backed Up By Research

The healthiest, longest living peoples in the world eat primarily a fresh whole plant based diet, very little meat/dairy/eggs (a little fish), almost no processed foods, and consume only 1900 calories per day!  Kind of turns our “modern society” food ideas upside down, huh?

Do you want to learn more about this health phenomenon of modern “civilized” and “affluent” society?  Read the very provocative The China Study, considered to be “the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted.”  And don’t miss out on a real eye opener, Healthy At 100, by John Robbins.  Find both at your local library.  These two books may very well contain the secrets of the fountain of youth – or at least the closest thing we’re going to find here!

How to Make Your Chiropractor Rich

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Fun

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Nearly everything we do touches our wallets!

Risk can be fun.  Oh, ya!  And when you’re young it seems that fun is all about taking risks, which sometimes translates to foolish or outright stupid.  Nothing wrong with having some fun necessarily.  But it may cost you – not just in hurt pride but in gobs of money for current and future medical treatments should your grand ideas fail!

Broken bones and bruises are easy to shrug off when you’re young and heal fast or otherwise not paying the insurance premiums and deductibles.  At some point though, especially as we get older, we start understanding the true cost of our rambunctiousness.

For example, at what age would you NOT be a human wrecking ball anymore? Ha ha!  Case in point:  How to make your doctor, chiropractor, and a few lawyers richer with one fell swoop…

Run From A Reverse Mortgage

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Debt, House

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Have I Got A Deal For You

Perhaps you’ve heard of the claimed benefits of reverse mortgages, which are touted to help you out in retirement if you’re short on monthly income.  And after all, these products are endorsed by more than one glib and graying famous actor so they must be good, right?

You know the drill:  Get a reverse mortgage and have no more mortgage payments!  All it takes is being at least sixty-two years old and an easy government-insured loan against your home equity.  You receive a lump sum or monthly payments for years to come and get to live in your house too!  What a concept!

I’m not here to say that reverse mortgages are some great evil.  But they do seem a bit devious.  I’ve always been leery.  For some reason, a red flag goes off every time I see one of those poker face ads.

For Sale: Borrowed Money

With a reverse mortgage you greatly increase the risk that you, your spouse or your family will get into financial hot water down the road.  Obviously, someone wouldn’t consider a reverse mortgage unless they were a little strapped for income in the first place.  First big red flag!  Who are they targeting?  Don’t those pesky payday loan stores target people who can least afford it too?  Hmmm…

So basically, because we need extra money to live on we are going to borrow it (with our house as security), right?  When does borrowing money to live on ever make sense?  At some point, especially if you did this at a relatively young age, you will run out of money.  Then what?  Eventually it ALL has to be paid back, with interest and fees.  Is your house really going to appreciate enough to keep up with all that?

You Mean It Will Cost Me?

You are still responsible for paying the insurance, taxes and maintenance on your home after getting a reverse mortgage.  So is it possible or even probable, being so short of cash in the first place, that you may not be able to make some of the insurance or tax payments along the way?  I recently read an interesting article (Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, 11/2012) that reported that 9% of reverse mortgage borrowers were at risk of foreclosure because they were behind on tax and insurance bills.  Another red flag.  Ouch!

Is it also possible that you may slack on doing all the necessary house maintenance since you’re on a tight budget?  If maintenance was neglected for many years (since to keep the house it will always be a priority to pay taxes and insurance first), then so much more money will be lost when your house is eventually sold.  Whose loss will this be?  The bank’s loss?  Your spouse’s or family’s loss?

And then the final red flag is the cost of the loan itself.  These are expensive loans.  You’re going to have to pay for an up front insurance premium (up to 2% of the value of the home, regardless of how much you borrow), loan origination fees (some up to $6000), traditional closing costs like appraisals and title searches, and other monthly service fees that will rob a huge amount of money from your home equity right off the top.  Any time you have a bank or lending institution “help” you with money you can guarantee that they will profit at your expense.  That’s just how they work.

Should I Or Shouldn’t I?

Given the costs of the reverse mortgage loan, your home insurance, property taxes, and required maintenance, how can you possibly come out ahead?  The answer is, you can’t – unless the housing market in your area is so hot (or is hot at the time the loan needs paid back).  Can you ever be sure of the housing market?  This is not something I would want to gamble my largest asset on at any age.  But if you do take the gamble, the lender will profit handsomely up front – and that’s really what’s driving this whole push on reverse mortgages.

So before being tempted by a reverse mortgage, please consider that you would likely be far better off financially, with more peace of mind and with much lower risk, to simply sell your house and rent a nice little downsized house or apartment.  You can take the profit from the sale of your home, bank it or invest it in something low risk and still draw off a nice steady income for much longer.  As we’ve said many times, there is no shame in renting.  And living without debt is so much more peaceful.  That’s what I want in my old age.

Careful With Those Potshots (if your neighbor’s dog dumps on your lawn)

14 Friday Sep 2012

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Okay, here’s what not to do to your neighbor.  My wife never laughed so hard.  I was a fool and had to eat crow…

First you must understand some background.  So imagine this:

  • The nice neighbors who happen to own two psycho yappy Chihuahuas that seem as if they sleep outside our bedroom window.
  • Endless yapping at night, during the day, any time anything moves outside, whenever I walk in the yard, whenever I mow, all the bloody time!
  • Wishing they’d escape into our yard while I’m mowing or weedwacking.
  • Midnight prayers for an “accident” or miracle to happen.

Then, more fuel to the fire.  Every morning we sit in our front room and have tea while slowing waking up and gazing out into the park across the street. Inevitably, the morning dog walkers will stroll on down the sidewalk in front of our house with their furry Fido and Foofoo friends in tow.  And like clockwork, the happy mutts will leave a steamer or streamer in the corner of our yard by the light pole.  No matter what we plant there or rip out of there, it seems like every dog that passes by is so interested in that bloody corner.  Did I mention that we don’t have a dog, so it’s always pleasant to find a brown “wrapped” present in our yard?  Or inevitably the lawn mower finds it and flings it at me.

On more than one occasion we’ve opened the window and yelled something during the morning dump and embarrassed the owner.  It has become a source of irritation for us, probably worse than That Hated Little Pink Pig.  And I refuse to provide the neighborhood doggie toilet!

So imagine my surprise one afternoon as I’m sitting in the front room at the computer sipping my glorious afternoon tea.  I see the neighbor clamoring by with the two psycho Chihuahuas.  And, yep, like clockwork they stop at the blessed corner.  Oh, no you don’t!  “Surely you’re not going to let them go right there!,” I thought.  But just like a dog taking a slow motion dump on the lawn in the background of an outdoor redneck wedding ceremony, I stared in disbelief at the classic canine squat.  Sure enough, a fresh steaming deposit.

The dog’s owner, our neighbor, looked up towards our house and, I could see by the look on his face exactly what he was thinking, “Is anyone looking?”  He gazed again toward the house.  “No, great” he probably thought.  Of course, he couldn’t see that I had come home early and had seen everything.  After Foofoo did his thing, his human nonchalantly proceeded to walk Foofoo and Cookie down the sidewalk.

Now we all know the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” routine, so being the church goer that I am, I decided to do unto others.  I should say, “doo” unto other.  Immediately I marched to our garage, hit the garage opener button, and grabbed a shovel.  I wasn’t mad, just determined, with one goal in mind – to return the pile to its rightful owner.

Of course, I don’t really relish confrontation, and by then the neighbor was fifty yards down the street.  So I instantly found the foul belongings, scooped them up purposefully, and then marched up the sidewalk towards the neighbor’s driveway.  Now, in our youth my brothers and I had been quite fond of the gasoline, dogdoo and bag trick – you know, light the bag on fire on someone’s door step, ring the doorbell and run!  The surprise is after the fire is stomped out!  Yes, that crossed my mind.  But with our neighbor I just wanted to get even, not create an ongoing feud.  So I just deposited the soft chunks (three of them) on his driveway in a spot where I was sure he’d see them on his return with his little snarling poop machines.

After putting the shovel away and returning inside the house, I told my wife the whole sequence of events.  She seemed quite taken with my story and laughed quite heartily.  In fact, she laughed and laughed.  Proud of myself, I returned to the front room and the computer.

Not paying attention to the time, maybe ten minutes had passed.  And as I glanced up from the computer and looked out the window I saw the neighbor again.  “Ah ha,” I thought, “you have a surprise waiting for you at home!”  But he was stopped.  With Foofoo and Cookie nosing about, he was hunched over in the light pole corner of our yard looking for something.  Looking, scanning.  Oh, I wish I would have thought to get out my camera to record him looking about for those blasted nuggets!  That was so classic.  But wait.  What’s that?  A bag in his hand?  “Ahhh, you’re kidding,” I thought.  “You actually came back with a bag to pick it up?!”  Now that was one thing I didn’t see coming.

On a side note, you know how dog owners (no offense dog lovers!) will turn the bag inside out around their hand like some sort of sick puppet, gobble up the treasure balls like a PacMan game, and then reverse the bag and put it in their pocket afterwards!  Have you seen that?  Gotta love dog lovers.  They don’t mind finishing their walk with a gushy sack of nasty in their belly pack, just waiting to ooze out!

Back to our neighbor, though.  He was quite intent on finding the stash and looking a little taken aback as to where it must be!  “I knew it was here” I could just hear him thinking.  Oh, a movie of this would have been so grand!  He crouched and waved his hand puppet around and looked some more, scanning back a third time.  He finally gave up and continued walking up the sidewalk towards his house.  Oh, I am busted now!  By now, I ran to the other room to tell my wife again of this bizarre sequence of events.  She laughed even harder (so hard that our daughter was now wondering what the heck was going on), knowing that the neighbor would discover that I had left three presents on his driveway!  Ahhhh!

Now what to do?  Do I just figure “heck with it, he got what he deserved”?  When in actuality he had already made amends for the mutt, at least in intent.  Hmmm.  I just went back to the computer and shrugged it off.  Another ten minutes or so had passed, maybe a half hour.  I hear my wife telling our five year old that “Papa should go apologize.”  Not thirty seconds later our daughter comes into the front room to tell me “you should go apologize.”

At first I thought, “naaa” no need, no big deal.  But I did feel a little guilty about the whole thing.  And I realized how this could forever change the dynamic between our neighbors and us.  All over some stupid thing.  Those blasted little mutts!  Now look what they’ve done. 🙂  So I swallowed my pride and set out on the long trip up the sidewalk.  As I reached their driveway I noticed that my present was no longer there.  Stepping up to the front door, I pressed my finger on the doorbell switch…Gulp…

Watch the entire narrated, creative, video-enhanced version:

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Uncommon Cents (why we don’t budget)

14 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in Growing Wealth, Help is out there, saving money

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Growing money is all about dollars and sense, yet ironically we quickly lose our common cents just after payday.  Most people are not even doing the basics, ignoring the simple rudiments that our grandparents and great-grandparents seemed to know instinctively.  Often we find that at the end of the money, there’s a lot of month left.  We wonder where in the heck the money went.

Laboring so hard to earn the money, to spend the money, and to take care of all the toys we buy with the money, we resist and even resent having to do any extra work with the money once we get paid.  So we spend without a plan and get ticked off when the money skips off.  It makes no sense that we continue to run like crazy just to keep losing the race.  What we’re losing is our horse sense.  We busy ourselves with all kinds of other work, and don’t have or make the time for “working on our money.”

We’ve got boundless time for work, work, and more work – forty, fifty and sixty hours per week.  We find even more time to toil on the weekends to take care of our toys – washing the cars, scrubbing the camper, buffing the boat.  Then with what little time we have left we weed and mow, clean and sew, spend our dough, and then plop in front of the big screen after our blowout barbeque to do arm exercises with the remote in one hand and a bag of Doritos or cold beer in the other.  We have it down to an art.  Except one part.  We don’t work on our money once we earn it.

There are all kinds of ways to work on your money.  But none of them will matter if you don’t master the first step.  We’ve all heard that dreaded “B” word, “budget,” and we yawn as we think about ever actually trying one.  But having a simple, written plan on how you will spend your money each month doesn’t really take much effort.  Further, people who have done this regularly swear by how it prevents overspending and forces you to tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it flew.  So why doesn’t everyone do a monthly budget?  It’s wild, because doing a monthly budget would take less time than the commercials you suffer through in just one hour of television.  What do you really have to lose, honestly?  Missing ten minutes of embarrassing commercials on the potential side effects of medicines you can’t do without…yeah, you get the picture.

A few years ago Deborah and I helped teach a personal finances class where we covered all the money basics, including monthly budgets.  We told people that, yes, the first few months of doing a budget were painful for us because we had to figure out where all the money was going and then get it written down on paper.  But after a few months of perfecting it, we had a simple budget form and using it only took ten minutes or so a month.  What’s funny is that on more than one occasion since this class we have bumped into someone at the store or downtown that was in our class and they would say something like “you mean you guys are still doing a budget?”  As if a budget is just a temporary means to help someone out of a disparate situation or something!

A budget is king.  Our road from rags to riches had nothing to do with fancy investing.  It literally happened from consistently following our budget, month after month, year after year.  Investing is good, but what’s the point if you don’t budget because you’re probably hemorrhaging more money every month than you could possibly make investing.  It’s not really how you invest your money that counts the most.  It’s how you spend it (or not)!

Common sense would see the value in the monthly budget and do it.  Yet we spend more time deleting unwanted emails in one day than we’ll spend working on our money in an entire month.  Are we losing our minds?  We spend the very least time taking care of the thing that we spend the most of our time making!  But hey, we have over a thousand friends on Facebook.

Every dollar lost out of your wallet is another one that has to be earned again.  So enough already.  Learn to budget and shave off years of having to set your alarm clock.  Budgeting is not necessarily fun and glamorous, but I bet your job is not a barrel of laughs either.

That Hated Little Pink Pig

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Fun, Not Just About Money

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Maybe “hate” is too strong of a word.  But annoying just doesn’t do it justice.  Either way, anyone who has ever had kids or been around kids probably has a personal experience with a toy that drove them crazy.

You know, that noisy, squeaky, repetitive, grate-on-your-nerves wonder toy that the TV glamorized, your child had to have, and now you are stuck listening to, with the stark reality of waiting for the blasted thing to break while secretly hoping you could drop kick it over the neighbor’s fence.

That being said, one of our “favorite” such toys was this little pink, fuzzy, cutesy, singing porky pig with motorized legs.  Our five year old daughter “won” the bloody thing at a Christmas white elephant gift exchange.  Sounds harmless enough, huh?  But if that’s all there was to it, I wouldn’t be writing this.  At its evil core was that song.

Granted, it sang a rather nice Christmas tune.  Or rather, normally it would be a nice Christmas tune.  And I have absolutely nothing against Christmas jingles.  But the song was recorded with the most aggravating cutesy voice and intertwined with the most grating pig snorts and grunts – which continued all the way through the song!  Aside from the fact that one could take offense at what may seem like a mockery of a Christmas song, the overall effect was just plain irritating no matter what the song might have been.

So our daughter quickly learned of our displeasure with this toy, though she continued to love it.  In fact, she seemed to take pleasure in bringing it out into our presence and pressing that little button on the pig’s ear to watch us squirm.  And that was its undoing.

On one such occasion my wife and I were in the kitchen cooking and our daughter was pestering us for something and didn’t like our answer.  So she promptly said “hmm” and went and got little piggy, placed it on the kitchen counter, pressed the start button on its ear, and walked away!

As soon as those oh-too-familiar harassing sounds began to pummel us, my wife swiftly reached over and nabbed it off of the counter and placed it high on top of our refrigerator.  The trouble is, that blasted pig’s legs were motoring about as it sang and pranced and within a few moments we both glanced up and saw piggy teetered towards the edge.

My wife and I looked quickly at each other and our eyes were saying “are you going to jump to catch it?”  I’m sure we both thought “naaaa” at the same time as we watched the little pink blob do a side roll off the front edge of the frig.  Like a swimmer’s diving nightmare, little pig landed squarely on its side on the tile floor with a slight snapping sound.  And all was a blessed quiet!

As my wife and I grinned at each other, our daughter, who had heard the thump and ran back into the room, burst into tears.  We had to turn our heads away to hide the uncontrollable snickering at this neat stroke of luck.

As Dr. Seuss asked many decades ago in his book The Cat In The Hat, “What would you do?”  Hey, accidents do happen after all.

Middle Class Losers?

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Debt, Growing Wealth, House, saving money

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We just read yet another financial article, The American Dream Shrinks, that says how the middle class are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. That may be true, but one doesn’t necessarily result from the other.

The fact that the middle class is getting poorer is not because rich people are taking our money. We (the authors) are middle class, yet we are not poorer since the national financial fiascos starting in 2007 (initially, yes, but not once the storm calmed). In fact, we bought a house at the height of the housing “bubble” and actually paid it off during the recession.

Yes, we lost half of the money we had in the stock market. And our house value slumped. But in 2007 we had no other debt but the mortgage, no car payments, no student loans, no credit card debt or any other payments. Granted we’ve been able to keep our jobs while we continued to live cheap, drive older paid-for cars and save. All the extra money we could squeeze out of each month’s budget we put on the house.

The stock market has made comebacks since then. So overall, we’re at least where we were in 2007 or better. But the point is – we did not end up poorer, because we’ve finally wised up about preventing others from taking our money (usually in the form of interest payments, but also in frivolous purchases).

Job losses, health issues and other crises can bring on financial challenges, even disasters. But it doesn’t always have to be the case. With no debt, it is much, much easier to weather the storms.

If the rich are getting richer, it’s only because they have figured out how to weather the storms. Understand this: Rich peoples’ houses (if they are big and fancy) can drop in value way more than modest sized houses after a bubble burst and are harder to sell. Rich peoples’ stock market investments drop as much as they do for the rest of us in a crash too. They’re not immune to economical disasters, usually just better prepared for them.

And that can be us – prepared for the bubble bursts, the job losses, the market dips and other unexpected hits to our finances. The first thing to do is get out of debt! It’s surprising how little you can actually live on if you have no debt.

We know a couple who has very little debt other than the mortgage. The husband lost his job. The wife works just thirty hours per week. They can still make their house payment and even continue to save some money on one income because their debt level is so small.

Getting out of debt is the only way to go, folks. Let’s quit blaming the rich for making us poor. Because it’s really not them doing it.

What Will Bad Information Cost You?

24 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Help is out there, Not Just About Money

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This article was written primarily about the inaccuracies in scientific and other technical information, but it applies equally well to financial data as well.

What if I said that much, if not most, of the scientific or technical stuff you “know” is really based on faith that what you once read or heard is true?

I Say Tomato, You say Tamoto

Interpretations can differ over the very same observations and data. Regardless of the scientific, engineering or other technical field, the differences of opinion are often over controversial experimental and measurement errors, faulty assumptions and/or unrealistic estimates.

Every experiment and measurement has error. Most research also includes assumptions and estimates of unknown (and sometimes unverifiable) conditions. As a result, scientists, engineers and other expertss have to attempt to estimate and report the effects of these uncertainties on the final conclusions. So while a theory may be well supported by experimental repeatability, the associated data supporting the conclusions is only repeatable within some margin of error (which includes the experiment and measure errors, assumptions and estimates).

Margins of error are always open to debate, even though statistical methods may be used to try and make sense of the significance of the uncertainties. When there are differing opinions on popular theories it’s not always the scientific or technical methods that are questioned, but quite often the experimental and investigative uncertainties.

Spin That Record

Even with differing honest interpretations of data and the associated uncertainties, it’s still possible to spin the conclusions to support your own viewpoint. So now there is another added possibility – the agenda twist. Sounds like a dance…well, it is actually. After twenty two years of experience with technical writing in the engineering fields, I can attest to the fact that many not-so-great ideas can be made to appear well-supported by technical references, calculations and other records with nothing more that clever penmanship and data filtering. Is that good science or engineering? No! But it happens.

Depending on how much bias the researcher may or may not have, along with the significance of the assumptions and experimental errors themselves, the uncertainties in the final conclusions are either highlighted for all to see (if they are considered insignificant), or downplayed and put in an obscure appendix in the back of the report (or not even mentioned).

And when you add technical jargon into the mix of subjective data interpretation and gifted creative writing, you get an elite class of self-proclaimed experts that have created their own special language so that others will have difficulty challenging their ideas. The common laypeople are steamrolled by the sheer magnitude of technical details and intimidated by the apparent authenticity. This really happens, and on an unbelievable scale!

Let It Go Viral!

Opinions and misinformation have never before had the potential to reach such a wide audience as they do today with the internet. The old school methods of publishing, especially scientific or engineering data and reports, was that it had to meet industry standards for accuracy and peer reviews before it could be published. But today this step can be bypassed, and on a grand scale (though usually not by true scientists/engineers) thanks largely to the internet and, more recently, independent publishers and a variety of self-publishing methods.

As never before seen in the history of mankind, today anyone is able to self-publish an idea and immediately make it available to a very large world population via the internet, and have the potential for that piece of information to go “viral” (viewed by millions and millions of people in a short period of time). That can be a great thing! But misinformation abounds.

Whether mad scientist or phony philosopher or Joe-with-an-agenda, nothing precludes them from publishing material in the mainstream without any scrutiny over the content or bases for the conclusions. Sure, readers can disagree and negatively comment and otherwise attempt to discredit it, but that has no real effect and in fact can actually help increase popularity.

At its worst, data spinning gone viral is an excellent brainwashing technique. Joseph Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945) is credited with saying “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Pass the Aspirin Please

A lot of legitimate technical reports are intentionally written for the “technically minded,“ using discipline-specific terms and very technical information. Nothing wrong with that. But understand that such information is largely unverifiable by the layperson. To fully grasp what is truth and what may be creative writing requires an education beyond the average person. It also would requires pulling every string and reviewing technical details associated with usually many years of research in order to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion on our own.

The typical person cannot or will not go to this effort. Those that are not scientific or technical nerd types may be prone to taking much of the conclusions at face value without questioning the supporting data (shame on us!). After all, these are respected and well educated people telling us this stuff, right? Should us average Joes believe them?

What happens when an article written for the scientifically or technically minded is put on the internet? What if it goes viral and gets ten million views? Nothing necessarily wrong with that either. But I would highly doubt that this many website hits are due to ten million scientists or other “experts” reading the article. Nope, average Joes like you and me are seeing what all the fuss is about. And so then millions of us are probably not taking the time to verify all the references. Might this be dangerous if the article purposely contained misinformation?

Remember those cigarette ads that were supposedly not targeted at minors? Or, suppose an adult stands before a class of first graders, tells them that the earth is flat and gives twenty-five scientific sounding reasons why it should be accepted as fact. The kids will believe them.

Your Trust in the Truth or a Trick?

Believing something that is written or said is frequently more about the persuasiveness and popularity of the writer or speaker, and less about the ever elusive proof.

Most of what the average person knows and believes about scientific, engineering or other technical “truths” is, plain and simple, taken purely on faith because it’s usually impossible for the layperson to verify the details.

Even though most scientists and engineer types make every effect to present truthful, unbiased information based on observable and repeatable experiments or methods, all experiments and measurements contain error and most research also contains assumptions and estimates.

Scientific and other technical uncertainties are sometimes downplayed and the conclusions given more weight than they deserve because biases and intentional misinformation persist in academia and nearly every other institution. We humans always seem to insert our selfish agendas in everything we touch.

Don’t believe everything you read, or it will cost you. But whatever you do don’t stop reading, or that may cost you even more!